Series 3 - Mary L. Keffer : Personal

Ivan Wilbur Keffer was born March 21, 1890 in Berlin (now Kitchener), Ontario. He married Mary Louise Elligsen of Sebringville in 1917. Keffer began working for the F.W. Woolworth Co. in Hamilton, Ontario in 1912, after graduating from high school. He was named manager of a store in Stratford, Ontario in 1915, later working as a district superintendent and then buyer based in Toronto, Ontario. In 1927, the company opened the subsidiary F.W. Woolworth GmbH in Germany. The same year Keffer accepted a position to organize and develop the, moving with his wife and daughter Mary Jane to Berlin, Germany. He became managing director of the German company in 1933. The Keffers lived in Berlin until 1939 when they returned to Canada and settled in Toronto because of the political and economic tensions in Germany. Keffer continued to serve Woolworth’s as Canadian General Manager. In 1945, he was appointed executive vice president and treasurer of the company and the family moved to New York. Upon his retirement in 1953, the Keffers moved back to Toronto and lived in an apartment there as well as the house they built in Port Elgin. Keffer died January 7, 1965 and was buried in the family plot at Zion Evangelical Lutheran Cemetery in Vaughn, Ontario.